Dell to Adopt Itanium 2. But When?

Dell’s representatives confirmed last week that the company will adopt Intel’s Itanium 2 processor for their high-end servers in future. The spokesperson, unfortunately, decided not to comment about any timeframes or details.

Dell originally decided to cease building the Itanium based servers in 2001 due to very low demand on such machines. However, since the IA64 becomes more and more popular every year, Dell and the other big vendors need to start offering the appropriate solutions in order to obtain experience in building and selling 64-bit computers.

Currently IBM and HP offer their Itanium 2 based servers to their customers. Both vendors utilise their own core-logic devices for the mentioned products. Since Dell does not develop anything on their own, they wait Intel to start supplying them the E8870 chipset for Itanium 2 processors. Given that Intel continues to delay E8870, it may appear that Dell will only start supplying its Itanium 2 based servers when the Santa Clara, California-based company unveils its IA64 chips build using 0.13 micron manufacturing technology early next year.